


Descent

by ChecktheHolonet



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Adult Themes, Angst, F/M, Mental Illness, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChecktheHolonet/pseuds/ChecktheHolonet
Summary: Three years since Starkiller, and they tell her he's fine.Rey wants to believe.





	

Three years since Starkiller, and they tell her he’s fine. Rehabilitated. Reformed. Returned to the light. The trappings of Kylo Ren destroyed in triumphant immolation, leaving a renewed Ben Solo in their wake.

Rey wants to believe. Has carried that tattered, tangled banner for nearly as long as he’s been on the base, since they'd found Hux’s shuttle crashed on a neighboring moon, Kylo’s ( _Ben’s_ ) damaged body barely clinging to life.

It had been slow. Painful. Like bringing a Tauntaun to heel. Threat of punishment serves no deterrent on a soul trained to embrace pain, and reward’s promise only breeds suspicion for those mistrustful of love. It had taken months of conditioning. Patience. Persistence.

And then, a miracle in the form of three small, white pills every day. Just enough to alter his brain’s chemistry, to drown out the suspicion and rage and self-loathing. He'd taken them from her hand without shame, a drowning man clutching a lifeline.

The changes had come, then, real changes in his mood, his attitude. The long, dark cloak of his paranoia finally shed. The return to the light in small, measured steps. A confession. A kiss. A vow. A simple band of the rarest gold. A house, small and quiet, where they could twine together on a soft bed and share secrets in the dark.

Rey had loved Ben Solo for ten short months when the pills began to disappear. Supplier boxes, destroyed. Pharmaceutical plants razed to the ground. Shipping transports hijacked. Smugglers laid to waste, their hearts stopped with standard issue stormtrooper blasters. Entire distribution networks, bought and paid for with First Order credits. By the time they'd sourced the pills again, the damage had been done. Kylo had begun to refuse his dose, and Rey refused to force him. It had only been General Organa’s insistence that had allowed him to stay, to remain in the house that they'd shared despite his erratic compliance with the physicians’ orders.

It was a risk they'd been willing to take. For her.

\--

Five years since Starkiller and there are times when Kylo’s ( _Ben’s_?) energy burns too hot, too manic for others to handle. He stalks the room in angry, measured steps, heat blazing through darkly-lined, unfocused eyes, hands curled inward on themselves, fingers fashioned into crooked claws. His breath comes ill-tempered and noisy though parted, swollen lips, and every step of his stance screams _stay away, stay away._

Rey is careful to allow Kylo space on these occasions, to sit across the room, legs planted firmly on shiny hardwood floors, elbows balanced squarely on bended knees as she watches him wear a path into the floor. She says nothing, even when the curses begin to fly and the hands begin to flutter and his hair is yanked from his scalp by careless, anxious fingers.

  
Today, she lets herself into the house they’d once shared and immediately hears his voice. Low, repetitive chanting, heels clicking against the floor. His hands curled, fingers stretching out toward nowhere before digging at his own skin. She hesitates, half across the threshold.

It’s only when those fingers fly to his mouth, when Kylo takes his own nails in sharp, white teeth and bites with savage intent, that Rey moves. The last time, his fingers had bled, the nails bitten to the quick and beyond, nothing left but angry-looking pink nailbeds and traces of blood where the skin had suffered. He had picked at the slow-healing tissue for weeks, grounding himself in the pain.

Rey approaches as she would a wounded animal, steps taken lightly on stockinged feet that are wary not to pound the ground, to cause any more ripples in a pond already disturbed.

“Easy, love,” she says, tone smooth and low, an old habit that should have died with along with their romance, a bulb planted in acidic ground that still continues to sprout anew, year after year. Her words fall on deaf ears. When she sees the first vestiges of blood appear at the edges of Kylo’s thumb, she spits a curse like bile.

“Kylo,” she says, a sharp command. She doesn't even flinch at her misuse of his name. Kylo whirls to face her, eyes narrowed in accusation as he takes two quick steps backward. He had not noticed her presence. No longer felt her life-thread woven next to his in the fabric of the Force.

“Rey. What are you doing here?”

Something inside of Rey begins to rip.

There was a time when she would ache for the sound of his voice, would adore the honey-soaked tone of it tripping off of his lips, exhaled on a moan, inhaled in deepest pleasure, whispered in star-stained nights kept hidden from the outside world. Now…it’s ragged, jittery, a caricature of Kylo himself, jagged edges and shattered dreams, as real and dismal as haunting, jaded eyes.

“It doesn't matter why I’m here,” she answers. Her voice sounds as she feels: just another step in a million mile march that goes nowhere, barren and wasted as the Jakku desert.

Kylo backs up into the corner, spine neatly fitted to the wall as he watches her through shuttered eyes. In another life, another time, such a pose would incite arousal, draw wicked memories to the surface of her mind’s eye in a swirling haze of sexuality. _Laughter. Pleasured promises, hedonistic and thrilling. Slick tongues, wandering hands. His fingers, tracing back-forth, back-forth across her spine as he drifted off to sleep. Calm. Sated. Content. Force signature night-sky endless, just as stunning._ She can still feel Kylo’s hips wrapped tight between her trembling thighs, his mouth working at the cords of her throat, his hands tangled fiercely in her hair.

When she blinks the vision is gone, leaving a deep, unassailable ache. A wound that won't heal, a scab that she rips at again and again, like raw skin at the edges of fingers she once kissed. Craved. Worshipped. Kylo watches her, saying not a word.

“You’re spying on me.”

Rey’s spine sags, her shoulders bowing under the weight of unfounded accusation. Day after day, it begins as this. She can scarcely remember a time it wasn’t so.

“I’m not spying on you, Kylo. I just came to check on you. Did you take your pills today?”

“Poison,” he says dismissively, hands a-flutter, “s’all poison.”

Rey does not reply. She walks across the room to the small metal pill case and peers inside. Three capsules stare back at her where none should have been, and for a horrifying moment she thinks she’s going to cry.

“You need to take these, Kylo,” she says, and then, because her pride disappeared along with every glittering dream she'd dared to hope since they'd promised her _rehabilitation_ , she begs. “Please? You want to get well, don’t you?”

She cannot keep the pleading from seeping into her voice, cannot stifle the small cry of desperation that yanks at her chest and steals air as easily as a vacuum. She looks away, closing her eyes, waiting for the non-response that will inevitably come.

Instead, she feels breath on her face, warm and humid, a soft taste of summer against her lip and cheek. When she opens her eyes, Kylo is in front of her, his head cocked just-so, curious expression set in youthful features.

“You think I’m crazy, Rey…don’t you?”

She holds her breath, clenches her jaw, curls her fingers and closes her eyes, but still the tears seep slowly, and this time Rey lets them.

“No, Kylo,” she croaks, her voice a wobbled, broken mess. “You know I don’t think that…”

When strong arms wrap around her, so familiar, so welcome, Rey forgets being responsible and chooses to be selfish, taking the comfort as it’s offered, despite the implications. She clings to Kylo fiercely, wrapping herself in heat and devotion, and exhales shakily against his chest as gentle hands come forth to cradle her.

“Rey. My Rey,” Kylo murmurs, lips in her hair, hands chasing goosebumps down her back, “why are you crying? Please don’t cry, sweetheart. Please don’t cry. I love you. I love you…”

His words, sincerity-soaked and forged with conviction, form the first clear thought in days from a mind damaged from over-exposure; every nerve, every thought run ragged and raw. Rey can feel them fall from Kylo’s lips in a remnant of their bond, can taste the desire that still lingers on a mind long since shattered, but the sound is swallowed by her own sobbing. Instead, she hears the roaring of her own blood, the pulse of her own heart, the echoes of memories best left buried, long since mourned. She barely feels the brush of Kylo’s lips against her own, can hardly register the heat in hands that span her waist with such loving, reverent care. It’s a cruel, vicious trick to see this Kylo before her, this Kylo who looks at her with faithful, endless eyes. Who murmurs her name and tends to her body and feels like everything she’s ever wanted…ever lost.

“I know, Kylo…" she cries. "But...I can’t…”

Her body aches and her soul screams as the words slide from her traitorous tongue, but it pales in comparison to the sound that comes from Kylo’s mouth. Broken. Panicked. Anguished. Shuffling feet, a broken glass, a slammed door and she is alone, the soft sounds of his sobs clearly audible even with half an empty house between them.

Rey falls to the floor, and does not move til morning.

When she wakes, Kylo sits in the corner…slow. Calm. Still. Watching.

In the pillbox, there is nothing.

“I...will be better,” he whispers. “For you.”

Rey wants to believe.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: @checktheholonet


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